At one point in the new Jurassic World movie, the main character Owen Grady (played by popular actor Andy Dwyer) pulls a broken tooth from the main monster Indominus rex from the shell of one of the Gyrospheres. Believe it or not, broken teeth just like this are incredibly important for paleontologists when it comes to studying many different aspects of dinosaur habits and behavior! First, let's take a quick look at the anatomy of a dinosaur tooth.
A pair of Tyranosaurus rex tooth casts with my camera lens for scale.
In the picture above, both teeth belong to the famed tyrant lizard king Robert CaliforniaTyrannosaurus rex itself! The tooth on the top is larger, but it wouldn't have appeared that much larger in the mouth of the animal. The reason behind that is the darker brown part on the left of the tooth is actually the root of the tooth, and would have been inside the animals skull. The tooth underneath, the darker brown one, is a shed tooth crown. Dinosaurs, unlike mammals, have an infinite supply of teeth, and if they lost a tooth it simply didn't matter! They would grow another one in its place in a few weeks.
Stan, the Tyrannosaurus rex skull on display at the Morrison Natural History Museum. Look on the upper jaw. See the largest tooth, just about in the middle of the tooth row? Let's zoom in and take an inside look!
This is a view from the inside of the Tyrannosaurus skull from above, a view that the lawyer from Jurassic Park probably didn't find quite as fascinating. See the largest tooth in the middle of the picture? Notice how there's another little bump at the top of the tooth row, where the teeth are emerging from the maxilla bone. That's actually another tooth growing in underneath! If we CT scanned the original fossil, you'd be able to see all sorts of teeth growing in underneath!
Here we have a dental battery of the famous Triceratops, on display at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center (RMDRC) in Woodland Park, Colorado. Now take a look at the picture below.
Here, we have an individual tooth of Triceratops, out of the dental battery that you can see in the picture above. This specimen is from the Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota, and also on display at the RMDRC.
The reconstructed jaws of the enormous, sixty foot long sharkMegalodon, on display at the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Like other sharks, as well as dinosaurs, you can see the several rows of teeth in the jaws of this guy, as well as the enormous biceps on the arms of the sexy Chris Pratt look-alike on the right. Biceps for scale are approximately 36 inches in diameter.
Here and below, we have pictures of part of the dentary of the large carnivorous theropod dinosaur Torvosaurus from the Late JurassicMorrison Formation. You can see on the end in the picture above, the tooth is growing in, while the rest of the teeth are pretty well established. This fossil is on display at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History in Boulder.
Another shot of that Torvosaurus dentary seen above, you can see another tooth growing in as well, second from the left.
Shed teeth can be quite important for paleontologists when it comes to determining behavior of these extinct creatures. When paleontologists discover shed teeth of an animal, it can be a good indicator that the dinosaur was feeding on something nearby. Unfortunately, shed teeth are easily recognized as fossils by most laymen, and are therefore often picked up by the public or fossil collectors looking to make a quick buck, thereby destroying any information we could potentially gain from such knowledge. With good samples of shed teeth, like those employed by paleontologist Dr. Robert Bakker at the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation site of Como Bluff in Wyoming, scientists can learn about dinosaur diets, habits, habitats, and behavior, such as group movement, pack hunting, and even whether dinosaurs cared for their young!
A shed tooth crown of a Tyrannosaurus on display at the RMDRC.
A shed tooth of Nanotyrannus, a small cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, from South Dakota.
Leidyosuchus, a type of Cretaceous crocodilian, with several shed teeth.
Brachychampsa, another Cretaceous crocodilian.
In 1877, local geologist Arthur Lakes discovered the very first bones of the dinosaurs Stegosaurus armatus and Apatosaurus ajax in Morrison, Colorado, and if you check out the Morrison Natural History Museum, you can actually see them there today! Surrounding the genoholotype of Apatosaurus ajax, the very first specimen called YPM 1860, was reported by Lakes to have seven shed teeth belonging to an allosaur surrounding the specimen. This indicates some that the predatory allosaurs were actually feeding on the Apatosaurus, which is very interesting information for paleontologists to have! Below are two pictures of part of that YPM 1860 specimen, with the Director and Chief Curator of the Morrison Natural History Museum Matthew Mossbrucker pointing to the shed allosaur tooth crown. These pictures are from the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum in Connecticut.
Shed allosaur tooth crown in the matrix of YPM 1860. Photo Credit: Matthew Mossbrucker
Shed allosaur tooth crown in the matrix of YPM 1860. Photo Credit: Matthew Mossbrucker
Non mammals rarely have more than one type of tooth in their mouth, and when they do, it can often be the cause of celebration. For example, in our previous post about the Latin and Greek root of two, we discussed two animals called Dimetrodon and Dimorphodon. Dimetrodon is an early ancestor of modern mammals, and its name means "two measures of teeth," as it has two different types of teeth in its mouth. Dimorphodon is a type of pterosaur (sometimes referred to as pterodactyls), a distant cousin of Pteranodon, whose name means "two morphs of teeth," again in reference to the fact that two types of teeth are in the animals mouth. The animal below is a dinosaur called Heterodontosaurus, who belongs to the eponymously named family of dinosaurs, the Heterodontosauridae. As you can see in the picture below, Heterodontosaurus has several larger teeth in the front of their mouth, and smaller teeth in the back.
Heterodontosaurus, a small little Early Jurassic dinosaur from South Africa. As you can see, there are two different types of teeth in their mouth, larger ones in the front and smaller ones in the back.
One of the things that make mammals special is our teeth. One of the most classic features of us mammals is our varied teeth. In us humans, we have our incisors and canines in front, and our chewing molars in the back. Since most mammals were only about the size of a shrew back during the Mesozoic Era, the time of the dinosaurs, in many places such as Como Bluff in Wyoming, paleontologists rely almost exclusively on the teeth of the tiny little mammals, since the teeth are much harder and more durable than the rest of the skeleton. Below, we have a trio of elephantid molars on display at the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Look at how varied the teeth are! The first two belong to animals whose teeth were better adapted for crushing and grinding tougher vegetation, while the last molar would have been better for mashing up grasses.
Cuvieronius tropicus, a Pliocene-aged elephantid from South Carolina. Large, high-cusped molars for crushing and grinding tougher vegetation.
Stegomastodon mirificus, a Pliocene and Pleistocene-aged elephantid, discovered in the Ashepoo River of South Carolina. Like Cuvieronius, Stegomastodon also has those large, high-cusped molars that are great for demolishing tough plant matter.
The Imperial mammoth (Mammuthus imperator) from the Pleistocene of Florida. These guys have a similar design of tooth to the dental battery of the ceratopsian dinosaurs mentioned above. The duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs, also had a similar design. These teeth are broad and flat and good for mashing up grasses.
Shed teeth can be pretty important when paleontologists study fossils and extinct animals. They are good at establishing behavior, and can be pretty important for long-term studies of paleoenvironments. So when Owen uses the shed Indominus tooth in Jurassic World, believe it or not, that's actually something that paleontologists do from time to time!
A little while ago, I started a new series all about the Latin and Greek roots in the scientific names of different animals! IN THE LAST POST, we examined animals with the Greek and Latin roots for "one," and today, we are going to kick it up a notch: exactly one notch, to be precise! Today, we are going to examine the roots for the word "two!" Let's begin with the cardinal (i.e. one, two three, etc.) form in Greek! There are actually several roots that work here, but the one most commonly seen in binomial nomenclature is the root "di!" Let's DIve right in!
Our first "di" today is a small flying creature called Dimorphodon, a member of the extinct group of reptiles called pterosaurs. The name "Dimorphodon" comes from three roots, "di," "morph," and "don." "Di," of course, means "two." In this context, the root word "morph" means "form." In mythology and fantasty, a being that can take more than one form is often said to be able to morph their appearance. Finally, the root word "don" is one of my favorites (and is used a whole lot in giving animals their scientific names): it means "tooth." Altogether now: two-form tooth. This name refers to the fact that Dimorphodon actually has two different types of teeth in its jaw. For mammals, that's nothing special, but amongst reptiles, that is pretty rare!
Dimetrodon-another animal with two kinds of teeth! "Di" and "don" still mean the same thing as they did in Dimorphodon (above), but there is a new root in between: "metro." For this root, think of the term "metric." The name "Dimetrodon" actually means "two measures of teeth!" Dimetrodon's two types of teeth would, in the groups that it is ancestral to, one day evolve to become the varied types of teeth that we see in the mouths of mammals! Dimetrodon is more closely related to mammals than it is to any group of living reptile, and all of us mammals did evolve from a Dimetrodon-like ancestor! So remember, if anyone ever tells you that Dimetrodon is a dinosaur, tell them that Dimetrodon actually lived around 40 million years before the first dinosaur ever walked the Earth! That'll show them.
Dimetrodon (left) attacks the primitive amphibianEryops. Much like in the skull of Dimorphodon, you can clearly see the much larger teeth in the front of the skull and the smaller teeth in the back of the skull of Dimetrodon.
Let's travel forward to the Late Cretaceous Period, time of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, to meet Didelphodon, a primitive mammal about the size of the living Virginia opossum! As a matter of fact, it is from the opossum that Didelphodon gets its name: "Didelphodon" translates to "opossum tooth," as Didelphis is the genus name for the Virginia opossum and several related species of opossum! In turn, "Didelphis" means "double womb," which presumably refers to the fact that the opossum, like all marsupials, has its internal reproductive tracts where the baby will develop for a bit, and its external pouch, where the baby will develop until full term.
A fourth animal with "two" and "tooth" in its name is Diprotodon! The middle root, "pro," in this name means "forward," like the word "proceed." So the name "Diprotodon" actually means "two forward teeth." A quick examination of the skull of this massive mammal quickly reveals why! Although it looks like it might be some sort of ungodly large rodent, Diprotodon is actually a hippopotamus-sized wombat, the largest marsupial known to have walked the Earth!
Diceratops is a genus of ceratopsian dinosaur that is often considered to actually be a Triceratops. The name, which means "two-horned face," was later discovered to already belong to a type of insect, and changed to the name Nedoceratops. Some other paleontologists believe that Nedoceratops is really the same animal as Triceratops, but I don't really know enough about Nedoceratops to have an informed opinion on the matter. However, paleontologist Jack Horner believes that Nedoceratops is an intermediate growth form between Triceratops and Torosaurus, and since I don't agree with his ideas of Triceratops ontogeny and that I think Triceratops and Torosaurus are definitely distinct dinosaurs, that leads me to suspect that Nedoceratops is more likely distinct, and certainly doesn't bridge the gap between Triceratops and Torosaurus.
The name of Diplodocus, which means "double beam" originates from the two rows of chevron that are on the underside of the animal. This was originally thought to be a feature unique to Diplodocus, a defining characteristic that would set it apart from other closely related sauropods. Since Diplodocus was named by paleontologistOthniel Charles Marsh in the late 1800s, this feature has since been discovered on a number of other sauropods, including Barosaurus, also from the Morrison Formation, like Diplodocus.
Dilophosaurus, one of the stars of the original Jurassic Park movie, gets its name from the two crests on its head. Last time, we met Monolophosaurus, which means "single-crested lizard." Therefore, Dilophosaurus means "two-crested lizard!"
While it is the Greek cardinal root for "two" that is used most frequently in binomial nomenclature, it is the Latin root that is most often used for multiples (i.e. once, twice, thrice, etc.), the root "bi." You can probably think of several words right off the top of your head that use this root! In fact, the word "biped," used to describe creatures that walk on two feet (as opposed to, say, a quadruped), comes from the two roots "bi" and "ped," with "ped" meaning "foot" in Latin. So literally, "biped" means "two feet!" Let's look at a few more!
Marshosaurus bicentesmus - A theropod dinosaur from the Morrison Formation (one who has received "Full-Post Status," as you can see by clicking HERE). The exact relationships of Marshosaurus to other theropods isn't exactly clear, but some people think it might even be some sort of primitive coelurosaur, while others think it is more closely related to Megalosaurus and kin. Regardless of its phylogenetic relationships, the name of Marshosaurus is quite exciting! The genus name "Marshosaurus" honors the famous paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, who did a lot of work in the Morrison Formation. The species name "bicentesmus" refers to the fact that the species was described in 1976, the bicentennial of the United States. The bicentennial is, of course, a 200 year anniversary, and the "bi" in the name distinguishes a 200 year anniversary from a 100 year anniversary, or a centennial.
Here are two shots of a specimen of Marshosaurus that were on display in the lab at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science last year. This first picture is the right maxilla, which would have made up part of the front section of the animals snout.
Here we have more of the same specimen, on display at the same time and the same place. You can see several vertebrae and ribs in this shot.
Baeolophus bicolor - This is the scientific name of the tufted titmouse, a small woodland bird native to much of the eastern half of the United States. These little birds live in holes in trees that have been abandoned by woodpeckers, and are closely related to chickadees and, of course, the other titmice. I couldn't figure out what the genus name "Baeolophus" means, but it is pretty apparent that the species name "bicolor" refers to the fact that this little bird is gray on its back, and white on its underside. Some of the other species in the genus, such as the juniper titmouse (Baeolophus ridgwayi), are simply all gray.
Diceros bicornis - Here we have the scientific name of the black rhinoceros, a "Critically Endangered" species of African rhino. According to some sources, the black rhino often prefers to eat Acacia leaves, presumably employing its prehensile upper lip to avoid the plants thorns. The black rhino has pretty poor vision, with much better auditory and olfactory sensing capabilities. Humans are easily the most dangerous threat to the black rhinoceros, with lions and the spotted hyena occasionally taking young black rhinos as prey, and even more rarely attacking adults. The scientific name of the black rhinoceros literally means "two-horn two-horn." As we have already established, both "di" and "bi" are roots that mean two. Both "ceros" and "corn" are roots that refer to horns: think "Triceratops" for ceros (three-horned face), and "unicorn" for corn (one-horn).
Recently, the folks over at the Best Western Denver Southwest purchased yet another fossil cast for their amazing hotel!* This time, the cast is of a skull nicknamed "Judith," a specimen that is referred by some paleontologists to the dinosaur genus Ceratops. And, no, I didn't mean to say Triceratops. Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Ceratops montanus: as a matter of fact, I hadn't really heard of it either until several weeks ago, when Greg Tally informed me that the Morrison Natural History Museum would soon be receiving a very large box in the mail! Judith is still in the Cretaceous Room here at the MNHM, where she will stay for at least a few more weeks. I really didn't know much at all about this dinosaur, and was eager to learn more. Unfortunately, there's not much out there, as Ceratops is based on just a few bones that were discovered in the late 1800s. Despite the lack of material, Ceratops does have a pretty fascinating history, and is an incredibly important dinosaur; not because of what has been discovered about the fossils themselves, so much as what these fossils resulted in.
Greg Tally peers through one of the fenestrae (literally means "window" in Latin) in the skull of Judith, the Ceratops montanus skull for the hotel that is temporarily on display at the Morrison Museum. Photo Credit: Greg and Meredith Tally
When it comes to giving an animal or a group of animals a scientific classification, there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through, and a bunch of rules you have to follow. Sometimes, groups of animals are named after the best known and understood animal in that group. For example, Stegosaurus is the genus of dinosaur that defined the group of animals called the stegosaurs, and Tyrannosaurus is the genus of dinosaur that defined the group of animals called the tyrannosaurs. Sometimes, it isn't quite as simple. Think about it this way: Las Vegas is easily the most famous city in Nevada, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who spent a significant portion of their childhood thinking that Las Vegas was the capital of Nevada. However, it is Carson City that holds the official title of capital. Even though Las Vegas receives much more attention than Carson City, the state of Nevada isn't simply going to change where its capital is, and to the best of my knowledge, a change like that never really happens.
Although that comparison was a bit of a stretch and had about as many holes as the skull of Chasmosaurus, I think you get my point. The same thing goes for scientific names. Although Triceratops is the best known individual of the dinosaurian group called the ceratopsians, this group is still called the ceratopsians, as opposed to being called the triceratopsians. That's because it was Ceratops, and not Triceratops, that was described by scientists first.
Ceratops montanus, temporarily on display at the Morrison Natural History Museum. Photo Credit: Greg and Meredith Tally
The year was 1888, and paleontology in western North America was still going strong. We've talked about the Bone Wars between paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope before, and we are going to revisit Marsh in this post. To maximize the number of fossils he could describe, Marsh called upon the talents of a large number of fossil collectors, including the always brilliant Arthur Lakes in Morrison, Colorado. Another of these collectors was a man named John Bell Hatcher. Although Hatcher should also be remembered for a large number of his contributions to paleontology, for our purposes here we remember Hatcher as the man who discovered Ceratops. On a trip to a known dinosaur fossil site near the Judith River in Montana, Hatcher discovered a number of fossils. One of these fossil discoveries was composed only of a pair of horn cores.
Doesn't sound like much, does it? Well, truth be told, it wasn't, though it was enough for Marsh to realize that he had something new. If you click HERE, you can view the two page paper that Marsh published in 1888 that briefly described this new discovery as an animal called "Ceratops montanus." There are several things of interest that we should take away from this paper, some of which are:
Marsh originally suspected that this new creature was "nearly allied to Stegosaurus of the Jurassic, but differs especially in having had a pair of large horns on the upper part of the head." Marsh got the location of the horns right, but the close relation to Stegosaurus.....not so much. Given the enormously tiny sampling of bones he had to work with though, it's not a surprise that Marsh compared this new animal to something that he already knew a good deal about. Keep in mind that this is the very first scientific description of a ceratopsian dinosaur, so Marsh just had to go off of what had already been discovered. Which was nothing.
Marsh notes that the "position and direction" of the horns could be likened to the enormous Meiolania, an extinct turtle from Australia, as well as the lizards in the genus Phrynosomax, the horned lizards. He also notes that amongst the dinosaurs, the "only known example of a similar structure....is the single median horn-core on the nasals of Ceratosaurus," a mid-sized theropod dinosaur from the Late JurassicMorrison Formation.
In 1887, the year before this paper was published, geologist Whitman Cross sent Marsh a pair of horn cores about two feet in length and six inches across at their widest point. Discovered right smack dab in the middle of where Denver, Colorado is today, Cross relayed to Marsh that they had been discovered in beds of Cretaceous rock. Marsh, however, decided that these horns must have belonged to some sort of enormous bison, and gave the horns the name "Bison alticornis." Perhaps Marsh was still suffering from the misconception that the 1887 discovery was, indeed, an enormous extinct bison, as these 1887 Denver horn cores are not mentioned in the brief Ceratops paper. It is mentioned, however, that if the horns were discovered "detached," their "resemblance in form and position of the posterior horn-cores to those of some of the ungulate mammals is very striking," and the horns would "naturally be referred to that group." I have no evidence to support my hypothesis, but I wonder whether this comparison to the mammalian ungulates is insurance on the part of Marsh, as perhaps at this point he had recognized the true nature of the 1887 horn cores. This is pure conjecture on my part, and is mostly irrelevant anyways, as in 1889 Marsh recognized the dinosaurian nature of the Denver cores, and referred them to the genus Ceratops. Today, these horn cores are regarded as belonging to Triceratops.
Marsh mentions that several limb bones, vertebrae, and teeth were also found in the Ceratops horizon, as well as several bits of dermal armor, and states that he believes they also belonged to Ceratops. Whether this is true or not I do not know, but what I do know to be false is Marsh's next sentence, in which he states that the bones "indicate a close affinity with Stegosaurus, which was probably the Jurassic ancestor of Ceratops." The specimen is housed in the Smithsonian today, under the catalogue number USNM 2411. A search through the online records of the Smithosonian shows that 2411 consists only of a partial skull, which seems to be consistent with what I've read in other sources. I'm not sure whether these other skeletal elements mentioned above have found a definitive dinosaurian home, or whether their true owner is uncertain.
The final paragraph is, in my opinion, inarguably the most important. The paragraph reads as follows: "The remains at present referred to this genus, while resembling Stegosaurus in various important characters, appear to represent a distinct and highly specialized family, that may be called the Ceratopsidae." In this paragraph, Marsh has created the group of dinosaurs that, more colloquially, we refer to as the ceratopsians. Or, more colloquially than that, "those dinosaurs that look like Triceratops with those horns."
Ceratops was discovered in what scientists now call the Judith River Formation. Several other ceratopsians have been discovered in this formation, and due to the small amount and fragmentary nature of the material that was originally described as Ceratops, most paleontologists consider the dinosaur to be a nomen dubium. Nomen dubium pretty much means that the material is too fragmentary for it to be diagnostic, and can't really be used in the future to determine whether new specimens are the same as the original or not. Whether or not the newly discovered Judith specimen currently on display at the Morrison Museum is, indeed, Ceratops is still up in the air, as the paper has not been published yet. Almost all of my Ceratops knowledge is out on the table for all to see, so I am not going to speculate or attempt to draw conclusions about something that I don't really know enough about to have an informed opinion on. Guess we will just have to wait and see! In the meantime, come on by the Morrison Natural History Museum and the Best Western Denver Southwest to see Judith, and much more!
*If you've been living underground amongst worms and fossils for the last few months, you might not have heard of the hotel, so you can check out some incredible pictures of the best Best Western by clicking HERE and HERE.
Meet Pyg, the Triceratops hatchling! Pyg is the blog's new mascot, and will be using her unique blend of entertainment and education to help teach people about her long-lost world. Make sure to follow her on her exploits! I'll be using Pyg to help make our subject matter a little more fun, because, lets face it: dinosaurs are boring. Wow, I'm totally joking, no they're not, they rock! I'm actually with Grace Albers up in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah right now, so you'll probably be seeing some pictures from that trip pretty soon! However, tomorrow we will be talking about the recent Discovery/Megalodon controversy, so make sure to tune in then!
Many of you are probably familiar with the popular video game and TV series "Pokémon." While I myself never got into it, a few months ago, I did a post about the axolotl, a fascinating little salamander. While I was researching the post (which you can view by clicking HERE), I found that a Pokémon called Wooper was based off of the axolotl. I thought this was pretty funny, as I thought that no one had ever really heard of the axolotl, much less based a video game character after it! The more digging I did, the more I realized that this is a fairly common theme: a great many Pokémon are based off of real animals, both living and dead! So I thought that for the birthday post of my good friend Masaki Kleinkopf, we could look at the Top Ten Pokémon Inspired By Real Animals!
According to my Pokémon sources (AKA the Internet), the Farfetch'd is supposed to live in and around water, just like a real duck! It's also supposed to taste pretty good: again, like a real duck!
2. Lanturn - Anglerfish
Probably one of the freakiest animals in the animal kingdom, the deep-sea loving anglerfish bait other fish closer with the so-called "esca" on its head. The little fish swim closer, attracted to the bioluminescence emanating from the esca, and then the anglerfish snaps them up. The name of this Pokémon is clearly an homage to this glowing appendage.
The ceratopsians are a large group of dinosaurs containing one of the most famous dinosaurs of all time: Triceratops. Although most sources state that Shieldon is based off of Triceratops, the Pokémon differs in that it has no horns. This makes a more likely candidate for the origin of Shieldon another, more primitive ceratopsian called Protoceratops. If you click on the link to a post HERE and scroll down to the second picture, you can see a picture of the skull of Protoceratops.
The Pokémon called Sandslash is clearly based off of a funny, but quite fascinating, animal called the pangolin. Sandlash features the dermal armor of the pangolin (a fancy way of saying "armor formed from hardened skin, akin to the armadillo"), as well as the massive claws. The claws, in both the pangolin and, apparently, Sandslash, can be used to attack potential threats, as well as burrowing. The pangolin uses its claws to burrow into termite mounds, consuming them by the thousands. Sandslash can also roll into a ball to defend itself from attack, just like the pangolin: however, I don't think that the pangolin can roll away from its attacker while in "ball mode." For a song about dermal armor that features, amongst many other things, the pangolin, click HERE!
Relicanth is based off of a very unassuming, but entirely fascinating, fish called the coelacanth. For many, many years, conventional wisdom had dictated that the coelacanth went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period, along with the non-avian dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, and the massive marine reptiles. This assumed extinction was backed up by the fact that no fossils had been discovered, at least none that had been positively attributed to the coelacanth. It wasn't until 1938, when a live coelacanth was pulled up off the coast of Madagascar, that scientists realized that perhaps the coelacanth wasn't quite as dead as they thought it was. Since then, other sites along the coast of Africa, as well as in Indonesia, have yielded live coelacanths, giving the prehistoric fish a title it very much deserves: a living fossil. According to the Pokédex in the game (a sort of encyclopedia that talks all about the different Pokémon), the Relicanth was also recently discovered, and is also labeled as a "living fossil."
So apparently, some Pokémon can evolve, which is another cool and clever way of adding science into video games without making the video games dumb and boring. Apparently, the Pokémon Tirtouga isn't necessarily based off of the massive sea turtleArchelon, but Tirtouga actually evolved into another Pokémon called Carracosta that is based off of Archelon. Tirtouga appears to be based off of either the extant (still living, opposite of extinct) leatherback sea turtle, or perhaps another extinct sea turtle called Protostega. Either way, all three sea turtles look pretty much the same!
7. Archen - Archaeopteryx
It's in the name: clearly, the name Archen is based off of the name Archaeopteryx, a fossil bird that is widely considered to be the missing link (at least the first in a long line of links) between dinosaurs and birds. First discovered in the 1800s, the feathered fossil of Archaeopteryx helped famed naturalist Charles Darwin and his followers to promote his ideas about evolution and natural selection. According to the Pokédex, Archen is not able to fly, leading people to speculate that Archen is also based partly off of other, non-flying feathered dinosaurs, such as Velociraptor or Deinonychus.
8. Lileep - Crinoids
Up until last week, I'd never devoted a whole lot of thought to the evolutionary relationships of a fascinating group of creatures called crinoids. In my mind, if they look like plants, they're probably plants! Well, I was wrong: the crinoids are actually echinoderms, just like sea urchins and sea stars, and are actually animals! I also didn't realize that crinoids were still around today: I knew that there were a ton of them in the past, but I didn't realize that some of them had survived to the present day! Many people believe that Lileep is based off of these strange animals, and it's not too hard to see the resemblance!
Of all of the pachycephalosaurs, Pachycephalosaurus seems like the most likely candidate for the inspiration of the strange Pokémon called Cranidos. The main means of attack of this Pokémon is by head-butting its opponents, a means of combat long attributed to the pachycephalosaurs. This head-butting is currently under a lot of scrutiny, with some paleontologists saying that yes, of course pachycephalosaurs head-butted each other, in the same fashion that bighorn sheep do today. On the other hand, some paleontologists say that there is no way these guys could head-butt each other, as their necks would simply snap after a few impacts. Other paleontologists believe that they did use their heads for head-butting, but not in the way that the previous two groups were hypothesizing: instead of getting a running start and then cracking heads, bighorn sheep style, they would instead just lock heads without the running start, like many types of deer and elk that spar today. Still others propose that maybe these dinosaurs were smacking each other in the side or in the flank. Like many facets of paleontology, we may never know what, exactly, they did with their craniums.
10. Anorith - Anomalocaris
This is the Pokémon that really inspired me to do a post like this. Anomalocaris is one of my favorite animals because it is just so weird looking! Living in the Cambrian Period, about 500 million years ago (MYA), Anomalocaris is definitely one of those animals that does not get a lot of the limelight. Often found amongst the various and assorted crazies from the Burgess Shale in Canada, Anomalocaris is definitely something that I never expected to be in a video game! Nevertheless, here it is!
This was the birthday post of Masaki Kleinkopf! Happy birthday, Masaki! If you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animals, and I will do my best to get a post in! And if you like what you are reading, please feel free to follow us here or via Facebook!
The horns and frills of Triceratops. The tube-like crest of Parasaurolophus. The two crests of bone on Dilophosaurus. The sail on Spinosaurus. What function do these various bells and whistles that adorned these so-called "Terrible Lizards" serve? For years, most paleontologists assumed that they were for the sole purpose of combat, be it against predators, or the inter-specific variety. But now, more and more paleontologists are looking to birds to answer the question of functionality when it comes to these bony dinosaurian protuberances.
But what, specifically, about birds is it that is helping paleontologists figure out the purpose of these structures? It all boils down to an interesting phenomenon called "sexual selection." Most people are familiar with the term "natural selection." Popularized by Charles Darwin, natural selection essentially states that animals that are unfit to survive and reproduce in a given environment will die, and will be unable to add their genes to the genepool. (Certainly an oversimplified definition, but you get the picture.) Sexual selection, on the other hand, is a mode of natural selection, and introduced by Charles Darwin, as well. Sexual selection states that some individuals in a given population will be more likely to breed than other individuals will because they will stand out above the rest of the population. There are many ways of doing this, and birds are but one example. Horns and antlers are one instance: typically, if an animal has larger horns or antlers, they will be able to not only fend off predators better (i.e. natural selection), but they will be more likely to be able to fend off other males, and be more likely to be picked for the females (i.e. sexual selection). In many animals, form overcomes functionality in this endless quest for a mate, especially on insular (or island) populations. One of my favorite examples of this is the birds of paradise from New Guinea, as you can see in the video below.
That's all well and good, but how does that apply to the dinosaurs that we were talking about above? Well, for years, paleontologists assumed that dinosaurs like Triceratops and its relatives were using their horns and frills to fight off predators. Well, for Triceratops, that makes sense: with forward-facing horns and a two-inch thick frill, fighting off Tyrannosaurus doesn't seem that far out of the realm of possibility. However, upon examination of many of the other relatives of Triceratops (collectively called ceratopsian dinosaurs), you can see that, perhaps, not all of these frills and horns evolved to fight off predators. Below we have just one example. The picture you see is of a skull that below belongs to a ceratopsian dinosaur called Einiosaurus. As you can see, it does not seem anywhere near as well equipped for fighting off predators as Triceratops does. For example, its frill has a pair of massive holes in it. Furthermore, of its three horns, one points downwards, and two point towards the sky at about a forty-five degree angle. Unless Einiosaurus was being attacked by giant woodchuck-like, burrowing dinosaurs, or being dive-bombed by Tyrannosaurs in F-14s (as seen in Calvin and Hobbes!), it is difficult to see how Einiosaurus might have defended itself against its predators using its frill and horns. Another analogy I like to make is this: if you are a knight going into battle, you don't necessarily want to have a pair of giant holes in your shield, and your sword bent and pointing towards the ground.
So how does this all tie in to Stegosaurus? Well, a same sort of discussion has centered around Stegosaurus for many years. Were the plates used for defense? Or were they used for something else? First let's address the idea of defense. IN THE PREVIOUS POST, we discussed the thagomizer, the group of tail spikes, on the rear end of Stegosaurus. These tail spikes were almost certainly used to fend off enemies, and seemed to have done a very good job, too. So, if you think about it, if you were to cover a stegosaur in these spikes, it would be almost impervious to attack, right? Well, what's interesting is that, early in stegosaur evolution, many of these animals actually did have a lot more spikes than Stegosaurus did. As a matter of fact, the plates of Stegosaurus are nothing more than heavily modified spikes! Below, we have a few more primitive stegosaurs, all of whom demonstrate the fact that, prior to Stegosaurus, many of the plates were actually spikes!
So if the spikes were better than plates were at defending an animal against predators (which is the only logical conclusion that I think people can draw from the data at hand), then why did some of the stegosaurs change? For many years, paleontologists thought that they had a pair of answers to this interesting dilemma. The first was the idea that perhaps Stegosaurus used its plates as a thermoregulaton device. If the animal was too cold, then it could turn its body so that its plates faced the sun, maximizing its surface area that was facing the sun, and enabling it to warm up quicker. The reverse would have also worked: when it became to hot, Stegosaurus could turn perpendicular to the sun, minimizing the surface area that was absorbing the sun. Another theory was that Stegosaurus could flush blood to the plates, turning them a brighter color. This could have either frightened off enemies, or instead it could have been used to attract a mate.
These two ideas seem fairly good in theory: however, much like the skull of Einiosaurus, there are a few massive holes in this logic. If Stegosaurus used its plates as a thermoregulatory device, why do close relatives of Stegosaurus have very different plate shapes, or sometimes fewer plates altogether? If there was one design that these animals used to warm up or cool down, one would imagine they would all converge on the same design. But they didn't, which casts some serious doubt on the whole thermoregulatory idea.
There are two theories that seem to hold the most water today. The first one has the same general idea that the "flushing the plates full of blood" idea has: make yourself more noticeable, as these plates were very impressive looking structures. And, since they alternated down the back (SEE THE FIRST STEGOSAURUS WEEK POST HERE), then a side-on look of Stegosaurus would have been a very impressive sight, indeed! Other stegosaurs of the opposite sex would undoubtedly think so, and these plates probably served a large role in attracting a mate! Predators might have thought that the side-on view was impressive, too, and this might have caused them to think twice about attacking Stegosaurus. It also might have caused other members of the same species to back down, too, in cases where inter-specific combat might have otherwise come into play. As Matt Mossbrucker, the director and curator at the Morrison Natural History Museum likes to say, "think a skinny kid in a puffy coat."
Finally, the plates might have helped stegosaurs to differentiate from one another. This is a tactic often used in animals today (again, the birds of paradise and many other birds: see the last paragraph of our post on the cichlids of the Great African Rift Lakes HERE), and is thought to have been a tactic used by many extinct animals, as well. For example, the various horns and frills of the ceratopsian dinosaurs (like Triceratops and Einiosaurus that we were talking about before) are now thought by many paleontologists to have been used to tell each individual species apart, and its possible that that is what the stegosaurs were doing, too.
Want to learn more about Stegosaurus? Well, check out the Homebase for Stegosaurus WeekHERE to partake in more of the festivities!
Hey everyone! So I just wanted to let you know that I am going to be having a trio of lectures next calendar year, and the first one is rapidly approaching! It is on Thursday, January 10th from 4:00 PM to around 5:15 PM. It will be held in the main auditorium at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado, and the address is 1515 Greenbriar Boulevard. Admission will be free, but 90% of the
proceeds will be going towards the Morrison Natural History Museum where I
volunteer, while the other 10% will be going towards funding the Fairview
Knowledge Bowl Team. HERE IS THE LINK TO THE ZACK NEHER'S LECTURES PAGE ON FACEBOOK, WHICH YOU ALL SHOULD LIKE!
What will be at the lecture? Well, just like last time, we will have a fossil table down in front, with tons of fossils, ranging from whale and bison bones to spiders preserved in amber, red fox skulls to mosasaur jaws, and much, much more!
And, most importantly, what will we be talking about at the lecture? Well, I am just so glad you asked! This lecture is going to be covering a very wide variety of seemingly-unrelated topics. But never fear, for I have artfully woven them into an intricate tapestry of fun. Here are some of the topics and animals that we will be learning about!
Creatures of Madagascar, including lemurs, chameleons, moths, and the fossa
Intelligence in birds, including the African gray parrot, shrike, and crows
And much, much more!
I guarantee that it will be a fun-filled and entertaining evening chock-full of awesome animals, amazing video, and more than a fair share of Psych references! So please, join us if you can! Hope to see you all there!
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